Artist Statement 2024

 Artists Statement 2024

Throwing away the paintings I did when I had low self esteem, feelings of worthlessness, depression, living in the city. Throwing them away is the final stage of release of that trauma. Letting go of that part of my life. 

Along with it comes the throwing away of all the boxes of card-stock and cardboard stockpiled for painting and crafting projects. At the time it felt I did not have time to do everything I wanted to do. However, I did not know that in the pressure-stress of thinking I had run out of time already. 

The huge problem was other people interrupting me. Other people getting in the way with unhelpful comments about how my creative process is a psychological disorder. It’s not a psychological disorder; they are. They are impacting me negatively and disrupting my productivity. When they supersede it damages my self-esteem and prevents me finishing my art. When I ignore them I win because I have confidence from being productive. My purpose of being alive is as an artist, not as a punchbag for negative peoples superiority disorders and power games. I would have been more productive had they simply left me alone to get on with it my way instead of criticising me for doing it my way. 

Throwing away the art which did get finished, because it had attachments to a negative time of my life when I had less self belief, is cathartic. While it does mean a potential loss of income - the one picture stored here which I did show someone else won me a £2K bursary; to put estimated value on the other pictures, most of which nobody else has ever seen. They’re all taking up a room full of space in my house which is considered to be a mental disorder of hoarding by most people who are aware of the situation. People who don’t care enough to actually ask to see the paintings it must be added. 

The process of making art is recognised as a form of therapy and as skills study, which is more valid to the artist than are the finished objects. I studied the Fine Arts at honours degree level. While the paintings do have commercial value and would boost the local economy if they were to be advertised and sold, too many people have been derogatory to me for me to have any incentive to empower those peoples nation and culture. As far as empowering myself is concerned, I need to segregate myself from any attachments from the previous art and craft materials so that other people will accept me instead of describing me as mentally unwell for hoarding. The art has multi-level attachments to my negative self-esteem. I am told the filling of my space with clutter is a psychiatric disorder by people who I do not show my paintings to because I do not trust them to see the paintings after they grind me down instead of accepting how lifestyle is fundamental to productivity and that an artists studio requires materials and resources stored there along with finished works, to create art with. 

So it is no loss to me to throw my art out, or the resources required to make more of it. Other living local artists only want the unused paints for themselves and their kids instead of respecting my art and my need for making it. Nobody cares about the finished art anyway. I used to but I’ve got the hint from social pressure. It’s abnormal. This has liberated me to see all artists for what they are, and what I used to be myself. Art is a product of mental abnormality. All works of art are distractions and delusions no matter what the financial value placed on them by delusional people. 

This decision is liberating for me. To detox from the person I was, someone who struggled to make art and struggled for it to be accepted. By destroying it all, I am more likely to be accepted as a person. I can understand that now. It’s why the mental health people describe my collected sheets of cardboard stored to paint on when I get time, as an attachment disorder to junk, rather than as the tools of a working artist. They have got through to me. 

I would be better with an empty room and no desire to paint. No paintings stored and taking up space. The rare state worker who visits my house would feel comfortable there for all of ten minutes. Which is what this is all about after all. They are the authorities and are therefore the experts on how society should be, to improve it. The problems they cause me will go away. 

By burning them all, I am liberated from all the toxic energies thrown at me by other people. All my charcoal drawings. All my acrylic paintings. They’re bad. They have been bad for me. They are bad for the community. The imagery will be default be bad for the community. They symbolise struggle, depression, repression, toxic rejection of corporate control. They do not symbolise hope, aspiration, success, acceptance, purity. 

Twenty-five years worth of my creative output. It will require a few days of bonfires. I will release to the great spirit all which I have been to purify my way forwards. 

I will be free, I will be happy. People will accept me and say I have healed. I no longer need to make art. I no longer need to waste any more of my energy and time living in a delusion. 

The lesson I have learned is to recognise artists for what they are now. I know because I have evolved beyond that level of awareness into becoming something else. Artists are broken because they do not conform. I accept that to fit in, I must conform. We all should. 

Zen. 

All we need to do is breathe 

until we leave this body. 

It is the greatest inspiration of all. 

Brushwork

One thing I learned from wet ink brushwork 

Make the initial mark 

That’s all you have to do, otherwise it is overkill 

The samurai philosophy of right action and integrity 

Brushwork also emphasises this 

When a person has inner tranquility it reflects in their brushwork 

The philosophy of drawing a perfect circle 

When Picasso went to art school, 

in his interview he had no examples of his art. 

They asked; "how can you show us you’re an artist worth joining our course?" 

He drew a perfect circle before their very eyes and was instantly given a place. 

Try to draw a perfect circle. 

With swiftness and confidence. 

On traditional ink paper, 

every wobble representing lack of confidence and inner tranquility 

is amplified by how the ink goes into the paper

It’s a factor in respecting the artist through the art form. 

A literal translation of the zen stillness is captured on the paper through the ink. 

It is sacred for these reasons. 

So when we apply this understanding to the Western tradition of painting with a brush, 

which is a lot more complicated than simplicity of oriental brushwork, 

we can see the same applies here too, 

in the artists techniques. 

The huge thing in modern art is to persuade artists not to overwork their work. 

Giacometti is a famous example with his technique for sculpting. 

The only examples of his thin emaciated clay / bronze sculptures which survived 

are the ones his brother stopped him from working on. 

All the others collapsed. 

His method was to pinch clay away from them to get them as thin as possible. 

This sort of minimalism aesthetic is ancient and global. 

It is very important as an artist to be aware of it. 

Perhaps know this or some of this or a version of this already. 

I am not insulting your intelligence about that. 

I am attempting to teach what I know

and also to focus you

and also to simply discuss with you interesting stuff 

about art culture and techniques. 

Don’t overwork your work.

Defending Decency

When a person jumps to a conclusion and acts on it based on zero evidence, that person is delusional. Depending on the situation, that person is potentially dangerous to society, ergo; a sociopath. 

This is why De Facto courts of (law and) Order require evidence before they can be effective. They rely on this for their respectability. Which adequately diverts focus away from the common mistake of mistaking a Fact for a Truth to suit their purposes. 

At this time I will use an example famous in the contemporary Role Playing Games Industry of Zak Smith. Zak is a genius. He is talented in imagination, storytelling, writing, painting, and other fields. You only have to look at his art or read his blogs to recognise this. Zak spent much of his time talking sense and calling out hate mobs on the online D&D forums before seeing it for what it is, Troll City. 

Zak's ex-wife made a public libel against him on Fakebook. * 

Immediately, delusional brain-dead zombies who mistake hate for truth and who do not require evidence to launch a tirade of targeted hate, came to her aide and literally destroyed Zaks career. His name was struck from published books he had worked on. Group projects he was involved with ended their contracts with him. A host of hatred was levied toward him. Cries of "I'll make sure you'll never work in this town again, bucko!" from people who one week earlier had been sucking up to his deserved respectability. 

I have never spoken with Zak in person or by text. We live in different continents. I left one message on his blog on the one occasion the tech allowed me to do that, although I tried to on three other times. Mostly to thank him for his work, which is brilliant regardless of the allegations proving to be facts or false. 

The court case is ongoing. At this time no legal verdict has been made. It might go one way, it might go the other. Both parties are counter-suing the other for being abusive. It's that way sometimes when couples divorce. 

THAT IS NOT THE ISSUE I AM CONCERNED WITH HERE AT ALL. 

The issue I am concerned with is the knee-jerk reaction by delusional zombies to join a hate group and 

destroy a persons life, based on zero evidence and only hearsay. 

Those people are an abuse network. 

Those people should not have positions of responsibility in our communities.

And yet they do. 

* I was given a 48 hour ban from Fakebook because I posted a link to a YouTube entitled '20 Conspiracy theories Which Turned Out To Be True'. Troll City is embedded in their system. My response to that bs was to delete my FB account. My life improved exponentially when I did that. 

AIvART2

 AI v ART 

part two

Attention is energy

“Home isn’t a place. It’s the people you’re with.”
​Xenia, Assassins Creed Odyssey

Attention energy is validation

We have added value when somebody recognises we exist.

Does the artist create goods-of-value
to gain attention for self-elevation? 
or
Does the artist create goods-of-value
because the artist is driven to do so,
without caring about other peoples opinion of the art? 

Self-evaluation is reliant on others opinions.

Does exploring this question help us to define what is ‘a real artist’? 

Is there a grey area between these things? 

“Nothing is ever finished.”
Peter Robinson

AIvART1

 AI v ART

part one 

Is using AI to produce art “cheating” ? 

Do the paint and paintbrush manufacturers own the painting?

No. The artist is recognised to be the operator of the tools. 
The artists skill is recognised to be of quantifiable value. 

Does the tool manufacturer own the produce? 

The AI is a tool. 

Selecting 
-paint (photos to derive imagery from) 
-paintbrush (descriptor words to generate visual texture) 
-theme (style algorithms)
is the artists skill set. 

Selecting
prime images from batches of hundreds, 
​of infinite potential, 
is the artists skill set.
The time consuming work involved. 

Producing the type of imagery the artist wants to look at,
to bring into the world,
to exist, to share a vision, 
is the artists skill set. 

AIvART3

 AI v ART 

part three

DEATH OF THE ARTIST

In Latin to ‘Profess’ is to state an aspiration. A professor was one who stated aspirations, which other’s often mistook for facts on the basis of professor having authority. 

The professors first profession is therefore that the professor has authority. That’s really what professing is all about. 

We should note the existence of professing predates the existence of the acadamy. 

We should also note ‘academic’ literally means irrelevant equally as much as it means qualified. 

Profession is all about qualification. 

Therefore; 

Is one’s attitude toward and about one’s studies and practises a factor in what makes an artist an artist? 

“S/He’s taking it professionally.” 

Encourages people to believe s/he is a professional. 

We are living in the era of push-button procedurally generated AI art which is visually often at a level beyond even most of the old masters accomplishments. This question of validating artists is more relevant today than it ever has been. 

But, what is art? 

“Art is what is perceived by the observer to be art.” 

So that idiot who haphazardly dribbled out a sketchy abstract crayon scrawl onto a piece of torn cardboard and immediately forgot about it because sincerely does not care about productivity and value, has created a work which must be given equal consideration to an oil painting created by one skilled in technique who has studied intently all their life. 

If the kids prefer ‘crayon on card’ to ‘boring costly’ then crayon on card has won the debate. 

Modern art galleries are as full of crayon on card as they are oily boredom. The prices of either are negotiable, as both have fetched at auction prices into the millions. 

Therefore, the question regarding a persons attitude toward their products being relevant in properly defining them as an artist, is answered. 

The artists opinion has little to do with the public opinion as to what constitutes art and what art is worth. 

Proclamation of oneself as professional artist has become irrelevant. We all are. 

Yet the tools now available to artists, tools which enable any of us to become artists, are more advanced now than at any other time in history. 

We are living through a renaissance, on top of the 20th century renaissance because finally industrial technology and the realm of art have successfully merged. 

So what is the difference between the untrained pushing buttons on a phone and ordering print copies online, to the person struggling to buy paint and sell paintings to pay their bills? 

The keeping alive of traditional skills is a huge factor. Concern about living as embodiment of human culture vs enslavement to the machine. 

“Ain’t nobody got time for that.” Alexi 

At this time we’re living in a short window of commercial print versus handmade painting.

We already have 3-D printers, it won’t be long before we have printing machines which can replicate the application of physical paint onto a canvas, from source image.

“Imagination is not imaginary.” Mather’s, OGD

Quantum Wave

 

My phone died. 

My computer monitor died at the same time.

There is more to this. 

A growing awareness of how energy works.

Spiral Flock

One day I was in a college where my father was head of department, in the computer room. A row of computers went out, not exactly at the same time, but close to it, one of those tempos where some people saw what happened differently. The slow-thinkers saw all the computers in the row, stop at the same time. The faster-thinkers saw them go out one by one in a line. There was debate about it after the event. Was it one main plug responsible which they all fed into or was it individually they went out or is that how fast it takes for the electric to travel down the row which they're all connected to? That's not the purpose of this part of the story... At the end of the row a girl collapsed to the ground, as if she was the next machine in the row to have a power-cut. Lights in the rest of the room, the other machines in other rows, not affected. She collapsed and her pulse had stopped. I witnessed this. 

Because my dad ran the place, although I was not a student there I was, in breach of campus rules but because the fates had decreed it this way, knowledgeable of the staff room combination code, to access a telephone, to phone an ambulance. I had done this before word had got around to the rest of the staff and first-aiders etc that there was a medical problem with one of the students, technically she was dead. I'm not showing off, anyone would have done what I did in my situation, its a given. It is to illustrate "how energy works" with regard the underlaying structure of the universe. Her collapse sucked up all the power from the row of machines, although she was not part of their circuit, as her heart attempted to stay alive. Or something like that. I don't fully understand it yet. Certainly not a coincidence. 

 

I went outside because the ambulance driver/paramedic would not have any idea where in the college to find the girl. From outside I watched birds spiral above the exact same room she was in. There is a legend birds protect the soul, and help it to travel from this world to others, after death. An Egyptian symbol for soul, is bird. A flock of birds spiraling above her and I said a prayer to whatever gods, please help her come through. Guy arrived, I carried his electro-shock machine and showed him the way there. He zapped her heart, perhaps fifteen minutes after it had stopped, give or take. He got her going again. She came around, alive. It was years ago. I don't know the girls name. 

 

 

Candles & Vases

A girl I once dated told me she had seen the future and a major blockage in the way of me and her having a future together was someone called Alia. I didn't know anyone called Alia. That girl was, to cut a long story short, difficult. We split up. I don't know how much credibility to believe she had an accurate prophecy or if it was more of her bullshit. I moved house to where I am living now. 

I saw some art for sale in local free & cheap, decided it was worth buying because pre-made canvas I can paint over, the same size blank canvas is more expensive than these pictures. I didn't care what the pictures were. Somehow I could not bring myself to paint over them. Every time I thought about it, something stopped me. They have power. So one day I looked at them, figured them out. 

Its an African woman and her family of younger women and children, carrying water, walking through a desert. Walking away from the viewer. The other picture is a close-up of an African womans face surrounded by candles. I don't know any black families.  

Forgotten about, until I got to know one of the neighbors here, a black woman with (so far) four daughters. The eldest, Alia, is my son's age. They're friends. I've had some involvement with them over the past few years. Her mother is the woman in the painting. She would ask to borrow my phone and sometimes my computer to sort her banking out. Her energy has gone into my machines.

Tonight, a knock at the door. Immediately my phone battery went from 100% to zero, switched itself off, won't come back one again, the re-charger is not recognized. My mind associates cause and effect; knock at the door, phone dies, same wave of energy. Quantum mechanics in action. Waveform function.

So I opened the door. 

Alia with a print-out in her hand. "Can I have money for my fun run please"

I explained I spent my last money on dog food, come back tomorrow. 

Her young sister was at her feet "hello." I also saw the mother lurking in the shadows, holding onto a baby buggy with one hand, her mobile phone in the other. She has a phone now which explains why she has stopped bugging me to borrow mine. I went back inside without saying hi. 

Back inside, my computer monitor had gone dead. Won't come back on. On/Off button is knackered, or a loose circuit or something. 

With the computer plugged in but no monitor working, I cannot click 'close down computer' button, so I was forced to do something I hate to do, I pulled the computer plug out of the socket to switch the machine off. As soon as I did that, I heard one of the young girls outside cry out as if in pain. 

I believe that family is draining me and I believe those paintings are something to do with that. I do not know what to do about it. Only this week tidying the upstairs junk room I unearthed the paintings which were at the back of the room buried under stuff. I haven't looked at them but they are unearthed so to speak. 

I don't know what to do about it all. Waiting, to see if the time is ever right to give the paintings to Alia or something? Burn them? 

Lessons in voodoo.

(I am writing these words using my sons xBox monitor).

I have so many true life stories like this. 

7sobm / pasadoproximo

South West Wales / Bristol Scene; shaman of the river Severn (north): 

7sobm

pasadoproximo

I am lucky to be doing some music projects with her.

could this, be this ?

http://snakeappletree.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/green-wave.html

jungle journey

< preface

The following is re-blogged from my webjam account which was removed by hackers dec2013. It was originally posted several years previously.

Fortunately I had a copy as a SecondLife notecard accompanying each painting sold from my cyber gallery 'bunker' (the concrete pastiche mayan temple with tree-pod in the picture).

Unfortunately the land rental closed when the landlord sold the patch, so I will have to rebuild the gallery manyana.

http://www.rainforestconcern.org/                                             http://thefreeenergygenerator.com/

JUNGLE ART

a series of 33 images and accompanying text

the alchemical elements are symbolic and the concept is 

SHAMANIC JOURNEY

"Anarchy disguised as bureacracy, disguised as police state, disguised as democracy."

~Snakeappletree commenting on Life in britain.

I was taught in school the common understanding that oil comes from what once used to be prehistoric jungles; forests that have rotted down over aeons into a high energy liquid. I find this strange to believe simply because oil floats on water, so logically the oil should be floating on top of the ocean or in time have filtered down into the seabeds. Instead, somehow all that primal rainforest ended up underground in subterranean cavities, only to be extracted millenia later when Mother Nature set her children the task of refining it and filtering in our movable petrol filters into heavy metallic gas.

Thinking about the processes that have to occur to result in that situation is mind boggling. Billions of years in the making and then... a flash of combustion and a thimble of petrol ignites, is catalysed into carbon monoxide fumes and eventually filters into the soil to stunt the growth of existing species.

I have faith that Gaia, the holistic Life force of this plan't, knows what it is doing and the reason behind the chemicals ending up being filtered into the soil is to add a new sort of nutrient for the new sorts of creatures of the future, which will evolve after this current phase of global die-back. Microbes and mutated plant types, most likely. It has happened before, this we know from the fossil record. And it happens rapidly. Meanwhile this thimble of oil is instead used by me in the form of paint, varnish and pva glue to make some lush fresh pictures inspired by the jungle. I made these a few years ago, 2005 or 2006.

This series is about Process. The process of making abstract expressionist art. The process of thought involved with making a painting, deciding which colour, which brush stroke, how to arrange apparently random splatters, how much to use haphazard spills in creating this image.

Prior to making these images and thinking these thoughts I was wand'ring around in a british woodland, consciously picking up and placing sticks that had fallen from trees. My arrangement of these was such that some of them had obviously been consciously placed; others I arranged so that they looked as if nobody had touched them at all, that they had landed there quite naturally and without interference. In retrospect I can understand that I was exploring and deconstructing the decision making process itself. Questioning the qualifiers we use to judge.

Prior to my attending and during Art school (cheltenham university class of '99) I studied Jungian psychology and the Primitive in art. The Jungle, the forest, is metaphor for the inner wild, the subconscious, the primal self stripped bare of judgement, stripped of labels and the labeling system in our minds which program our observations away from true seeing, the Pure Gaze. A breakdown of the artificial constructed memetic grid, the systematic belief structure that we superimpose into the world and mistake for reality.

Wand'ring around in the forest and then making these images became a cyber-shamanic experience for me. Not only in the sense of their construction process but afterwards, the object we are left with, a bunch of petro-chemicals and wooden board (a cupboard door retrieved from the overgrown ruin of an abandoned house) temporarily bound into a form the surface world of which invokes emotional and psychological reference points, an inner journey partaken in by the observer. The images become signifiers of stages or scenes of that journey. It is a journey of transition.

This series is about processes and it is also about change; transition. Change being the only constant (other than void). There is light-sensitive colour changing paint mixed in with the other pigments here. What I observed during painting was that when the paint and pva dries it loses its sheen, its intensity. Subsequently it became necessary for me to take digital photographs of the work in progress, recording the process.

Still moments frozen in time.

~Snakeappletree, 2009

IMAGERY AVAILABLE HERE

no need to re-upload the pics because i found my other back-up

ceremony gate

< preface

Lived events, footsteps in a new direction which is at once a deja vu of treading ancient path. We have walked this route before, when we were others, wearing others body and mind; so our ritual passage is both a sacred awakening and a continuity. Tarot imagery is drawn from passing such as this, what Yaqui sorcerers calls Mystical Passes.

When we access the Otherworld by this way we are in a groove and the most befitting symbology, if we do it justice and do it right, is primal and basic. Every nuance of personal derailment from that path makes it unique for us and yet more difficult for future selves to follow. Our complexity is streamlined through the gate, it is the eye of a needle. 

I wrote much at the time regarding the passing and wrote it in paint and with pencil. I found as i wrote that the imagery was writing itself, my body a conduit for its manifestation, the flamboyancy of my studied skill mere wallpaper around the principle form.  I borrowed from my studies, symbols easy to recognize and dance with; as is their pagan purpose. The prose, struggling to remain a direct account, becomes poetic; dancing wild with the heart as it has to, for this is the only way to tell it true. To do it justice and to stay within its play, this is necessarily the way.

Imagery to follow.

Ishtar is Itza

< preface

During my mid-twenties, the first decade of the twenty-first millennium, my research revealed the following revelation:

Ishtar is the name of a Babylonian deity, a Goddess whose concerns are Love, War, and the fertility they generate. During my teens I danced with my then-partner through the Processional Walkway of the Goddess which is currently located in Berlin Museum; together we entered the Ishtar Gate.

Itza is the Mayan word for 'city' although a more proper definition is 'the ways of all the people'. Upon reflection I saw that the ways of the people are, essentially, the fertility generated between love and war. In a single word i would use 'urban' since we are indeed and increasingly an urban species, building our own habitat in the same way as is natural to other builder species which we cohabit with.

I X A where X represents ST or TS alternately ZT or TZ; the serpent on the cross motif.

The Mayans associate Itza with the Fifth Age, which in their galactic calendar renews itself circa 2012. This coincides with the western astrological Age of Aquarius, where 'the christ consciousness' previously associated with feminine Isis energy, becomes mainstream.

Christ, Chi-Ri-ST, associated with the preceding age of Pisces symbolized by the fish (vesca pisces, relating it to the sacred well concept).

The word ISIS symbolizes the pure flow of both ida and pingala streams of the kundalini flowing perfectly in balance; the internal and external worlds perfectly mirror each other, are one and the same. This is the lesson we are to learn as a species during the era of the fifth age. 

The following series of my art is dedicated to this concept and entitled 'Ishtar is Itza'. It is intentionally urban, and intentionally multi-layered both in technique and references. Obviously this takes it into the abstract. The main of the series is two large canvases, one entitled 'Itza' and the other entitled 'Ishtar'.

The rest of the series deals largely with the concepts involved with urban human culture as summarized by love war and fertility, and is multi-format.

The project is expansive involving use of computer game engines to create labyrinthine 3D environments as well as 2D computer art augmented from digital close-up stills from the over-layered painted textures.

ITZA

The painting palette and techniques are minimalist; black, white, the grays between: from the scarred patchwork of tarmac and cracked concrete which our urban habitat is constructed of, to the city lights at night where halogen blends through mist into the crisp inky darkness.

Fat paintbrushes for smudgy splodges, thrown and dribbled marks, haphazard and accidental like spillage in the street; are finely cut and repeated with cardboard edge, spreading the paint in lines using the same technique as for cutting up lines of cocaine, the speed of life of the city.

Layer upon timeless layer; the history and the future of this place are equally the same as this present scene, that being a stage, a momentary gate in a process of continual progress, toward a goal we cannot fathom beyond its own perpetuation and changing nature.

 

IZTA

Her eyes are bisexual dun black, soaking in her domain and nevertheless the most intense blazing light; dark matter, the hidden secrets that 95% our environment remains obscured despite repeat patterns of our lives, generation after generation.

She wears a bourka for high fashion and religious protection, emphasizing her personality through the look she casts. What we say about the city we can say about her. She is virgin, innocent and whore, wise mother ancient spirit and young child needing the support that makes us what we are; by providing it or by taking of her soul.


Thus we become her, she who lives through us, watching endlessly and steering from realms beyond our senses. She teaches us our limitations and offers us freedoms. Without her venom, we suffocate in our own stagnation.

process art

This blog is by way of a Preface
to a series of interconnected blogs showcasing my art.

See links to other related blogs.

It has been a long time since I last painted, other than a brief splash eighteen months ago which produced the start of a series that has not been returned to yet, unless the divergence from the mind of the artists aspiration and vision, from the actualized works, deems the continuity to be taken as a whole for what it is despite the artists intentions and influences. How an artist categorizes internally his or her own work, compared with how historians categorize the same.

Exploring that is a huge part of what my work is about; in a word: PROCESS. It is inseparable from subject.

The deep and intricate background feelings and observations of an artist about the subject matter; all the stuff a casual viewer doesn't get to see; the write-up to justify or explain the are object. The invisible processes at work to create a finished piece or series. 

As a virtual adept of the marvels of computer augmented art (ie: Photoshop 2D, Cheetah 3D) utilizing digital technologies I find the smooth transition from a painted canvas (or in most cases reclaimed board or cardboard) through photography into cyber environment to be a natural continuity of the act of making a painting. 

Most often the canvas is discarded as a biproduct in favour of further development of the piece, through the pipeline, through a blog and into the perception of the viewer. One canvas becomes a whole series of digital stills, becomes an interactive environment within a game engine and an Oculus Rift headset. Electricity is now a crucial raw element of the artists tool set. Oil and Acrylic have become graphic tablet. I do not at this time own half of the products I am talking about, it is illustrative. 

Links:

Jungle Journey series

Ceremony Gate series

Ishtar is Itza series

Vino Draco

I bought a bottle of south Australian red wine today. 

I don't drink often. 

I drank (a small number) of bottles of whiskey,

when I had superbug alien man flu that lasted 8 weeks. 

Before that I drank some cider when I was seeing friends this time last year. 

Before that, several years of sobriety. 

And before that, 

a dream in which the pixies basically told me straight: 

get off the booze and eat fish&fruit or I would be fucked up for good. 

Before that I drank quite a lot of Morgans Spiced Rum as a method of soothing the desperate pains of giving up chain smoking spliffs for many long years. During which there was a phase of cider addiction when I was part of a music production obsessed street crew.  

Bite The Wax Tadpole 

  It has been probably 15 years since I was able to drink red wine

because of the association I have with it and my ex from art school

who I deeply passionately adored. 

It was a magickal relationship. 

We used to drink it a lot. 

Not quite constantly, but frequently. 

 She was a brilliant artist and a great dancer. 

We traveled together and studied together

and tearing us apart was a cruel reptilian christian thing for the older generation to do. 

It has taken me this long to recover from it. 

Buying the wine is a sign that I am. 

This blog isn't supposed to be about that though, or alcohol. 

This blog is intended to be about Art. 

It has been 15 years since I last really got into drawing enough to become focused on a project, caring enough about it, to see it through to wherever it naturally wants to lead me. 

A few scribbles here and there but nothing for real, until now. 

I haven't felt like an artist since I left art school. 

The dragon at the top of the page is one resolution. 

The drawing below is called forth from imagination.